The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

with each grade level, with the percentage of boy bullies who also were victims decliningbetween seventh and eighth grade. Middle school youth most often experienced electronicbullying via instant messaging (66 percent), followed by chat rooms (25 percent), e-mail (24percent), Web sites (23 percent), and text messaging (14 percent). The authors conclude thatelectronic bullying is a significant problem, suggesting that one potential means of preventing itis for schools to enact rules and policies prohibiting electronic bullying, in addition to thosealready in place to prevent offline bullying.Moessner, Chris. “Cyberbullying.” Trends and Tudes, April 2007, 1–4. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters/k12news/HI_TrendsTudes_2007_v06_i04.pdf (accessedMarch 23, 2009).This study focuses on adolescents’ reactions to cyberbullying. The National Crime PreventionCouncil commissioned this 2007 report by Harris Interactive, based on a national survey of 846children ages 13 to 17. The council chose this age-group because parents tend to give children inthis population less supervision than at other ages. The study defines cyberbullying as the use ofthe Internet, cell phones, or other technology to send or to post text or images intended to hurt orembarrass another person.The researchers asked young people about the prevalence ofcyberbullying and their responses to it. More than four in 10 teenagers (43 percent) in this surveyreported that they had experienced cyberbullying in the previous year, with the most commonoccurrence among those 15 and 16 years old. Although many middle school students (48percent) and high school students (58 percent) reported that cyberbullying did not bother them,58 percent of middle school students and 56 percent of high school students commonlyresponded to cyberbullying with anger. Girls (63 percent) reacted with anger more often thanboys (48 percent). Seventy-one percent of teenagers surveyed believe that the most effectivemeans of preventing cyberbullying is software that blocks site access, and 62 percent think thatrefusing to forward cyberbully messages is most effective.Unique to this survey was a question about the school administration’s role in preventingcyberbullying: only 33 percent of the teenagers felt schools should educate students aboutcyberbullying. However, 37 percent agreed that schools should have rules prohibitingcyberbullying. The study suggests that parents can help their children avoid cyberbullies bysetting expectations for online behavior and monitoring their children’s Internet activities.Patchin, Justin W., and Sameer Hinduja. “Bullies Move Beyond the Schoolyard: A PreliminaryLook at Cyberbullying.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 4, no. 2 (April 2006): 148–69.In this preliminary look at the issue of cyberbullying, the authors describe the negative impactonline bullying has on youth, providing the results of a survey conducted to determine the extentand nature of online bullying. The article defines cyberbullying as willful and repeated harminflicted through the medium of electronic text. Cyberbullying causes public humiliation andembarrassment, which can lead to serious psychological, emotional, and social wounds.Adolescents’ online interaction ۛtheir cyber lifeۛoften revolves around school. Events occurringat school are often the topic of cyber conversation, and cyber conversations often continue atschool. The interaction between adolescents’ school and cyber life has the potential to causevictims of cyberbullying greater public embarrassment than traditional, offline bullying.F-29